Not necessarily all Japanese parents are against kids taking illegal drugs, according to a survey released April 13 by the National Federation of High School Parent-Teacher Associations.
In the nationwide survey of about 4,000 parents of high school students, 96.8 percent said narcotics should not be taken under any circumstances, while 0.4 percent said they can if only once and 0.6 percent considered children free to make their own decision. "We should take seriously the fact that some 3 percent of those polled were not against drugs," said Yoshitaka Kimoto, head of the federation. "This reconfirmed the need to improve education at home."
Most of the parents cited their declining ability to educate their children at home as the main cause of the child drug abuse problems of recent years, according to the survey. About 38 percent of the parents also blamed the decline in the standard of what is considered normal in society for contributing to the problem.